Building record DRK 058 - Drinkstone Hall

Drinkstone Hall is an unlisted mid-19th century farmhouse that according to its present owner was heavily renovated in circa 1900 after a long period of semi-dereliction. The external render and fenestration were renewed as part of this renovation, and the building has a modern external appearance. The interior retains many original features of circa 1860, including a stick-baluster staircase, archeed coal grates and foliate ceiling cirnices. A central stair passage divided a dining room and frawing room in the front (southern) range, while the kitchen and service rooms lie in a rear wing which projects from the western end of the northern elevation to create an L-shaped outline. The two-storied entrance porch is of painted Gaultbrick (probably Woolpit whites), but the remaiing external walls appear to consist of rendered studwork. There is no obvious evidence of re-used material and the brickwork of the cellar beneath the southern range and its deal roof structure are both consistent with a mid-19th century date.

The Drinkstone tithe map of 1838 shows an earlier house which lay to the rear of the present southern range and partly on the site of the northern wing (fig.1), together with a scattered group of farm buildings to the south-west. The distinctive outline of the existing house appears for the first time on the first and second edition Ordnance Surveys of 1886 and 1904 respectively (fig.2), along with a new and probably contemporary ‘model farm’ complex (see SCC HBR dated April 2008). The Ordnance Surveys label the property ‘Hall Farm on site of Drinkstone Hall’, and the name ‘Drinkstone Hall’ was for a time associated with a much larger Georgian brick house that lay elsewhere in the parish and was occupied in the early 20thcentury by Lady Douglas (see press cuttings in Suffolk Record Office). The transfer of high-status names from one site to another in this way was not uncommon in the 19th century, and there is nothing to suggest the moated site was not associated with the main medieval manor of Drinkstone and the hall mentioned in Domesday. The farmhouse was still known as Drinkstone Hall in White’s Directory of 1844, and the tenanted farm contained a substantial 287 acres of land in 1838 (S1).